


in the edges (where my humanity sleeps)

by whalesong_and_bones



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Recreational Drug Use, Serious Injuries, no beta read we die like (wo)men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25905991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whalesong_and_bones/pseuds/whalesong_and_bones
Summary: Emily has more close encounters to death than she would prefer to. The Outsider is always there to see her through the aftermath.
Relationships: Emily Kaldwin & The Outsider, Emily Kaldwin/The Outsider
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	in the edges (where my humanity sleeps)

It hurt.

Everything hurt.

Each breath was accompanied by excruciating agony - the skin of her body barely tethered, like cheap fabric stretched across the bosom of a social climber. At the edges of her awareness, Emily was conscious of the feminine voices, muffled but clear, nonetheless. They were discussing someone. She could almost make out the name-

“Her Majesty has finally awakened. You’ve been keeping the good Doctor and the Captain sick with worry, Emily,” a voice crooned, a Tyvian breeze on her overheated thoughts.

Emily opened her eyes. Through the fog of her thoughts, she could discern the pale features of the Outsider, looming over her. The metal ceiling of her room, covered in cobwebs and rust, reminded her of the cabin on Megan’s ship. When did she get back…?

The memories started flooding back. The Addermire Institute. Hypatia - Grim Alex - playing with her like a toy, the physical struggle before she could inject the Doctor with the counter-serum. The dash towards the docks, bleeding lacerations across her body leaving a bloody trail for guards to follow. Megan’s worried looks, as they sailed back to the boat. 

The fog was starting to dissipate. She had barely managed to wrap her wounds and down some Addermire’s Solution before sleep had overtaken her.

“You’ve been unconscious for the last twenty hours,” the Outsider supplied, his tone clipped. 

If breathing had been painful, laughing at the Void God’s strange concern threatened to knock her unconscious again.

\-------------------------------

Emily is, by no means, an inexperienced woman when it comes to domains of the  _ mind-enhancing _ drugs. There had been plenty of evenings spent in casual affections, with men and women alike, sharing a pipe of white leaf and enjoying the constellations forming behind her eyelids. There had been other nights, hidden with oaths of secrecy, from Corvo and her advisors, partaking in powder which would leave her body tingling for days. None of that, however, could have prepared her for the Howler’s dust.

She should have been more careful - she had been leaning too far over the edge, trying to hear Paolo’s voice over the sound of music of the saloon. Her recent successes have gone to her head, she had thrown caution to the wind and she had been spotted by a look-out.

She felt the pin-prick of the dart penetrating her coat. She thought it did not graze her skin, even after she had managed to incapacitate the Howler. When she took it out, Emily realized the dart tip had been covered in her blood.

The first symptom that had set in where the shivers. The warm Karnacan sun did nothing to abate them, as they kept getting more and more violent as the minutes ticked by. Her hands felt clammy, cold - like the flesh of a bleeding whale.

Emily had been lucky to find a dusty hovel before she lost complete use of her muscles. The spasms felt like touching a power generator, over and over again. Her hands were shaking. She closed her eyes and was enveloped by colours. Her stomach constricted painfully.

She leaned her head against the wall of the hovel, cool against her face. Her tongue tasted faintly of mint. Emily felt a cool hand stroking her hair. Her senses were overcome by the smell of whale-oil and rotting algae.

“The poison should be out of your system soon enough,” the Outsider said, tracing his hand against her sweaty brow. “The Howlers do not use it to kill, mostly to incapacitate.”

Emily opened her eyes. The drab beige interior of the hovel has turned a sickly shade of purple, the shadows of the up-turned furniture creating visions of Pandyssian monsters. Most striking, however, were not the dancing lights of the sun filtering through the broken window, or the red trails left by bloodflies. The Outsider’s eyes, horrid black-on-black, were rendered in palest green.

\-------------------------------

Megan promised Emily that the way back from Karnaca to Dunwall would only take a month, if the winds were kind. They had been in open water for the sixth week now, with no land in sight and howling storms at their heels.

The skiff had almost been lost to a particular vicious wave, almost cap-sizing the Dreadful Wale. It had been saved, at the cost of a bout of hypothermia and a pulled shoulder muscle on the part of Emily. The Outsider seemed almost amused at her misfortune, perched at the end of her cot, as she was convalescing.

“Do you intend on making fighting Delilah more difficult,” the Outsider remarked, the corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk, “or do you desire more of a challenge and wish to fight with a handicap?”

Emily glanced from her journal. “Surely, if I wanted to challenge myself, I would ask you to remove the Mark,” she replied, playing along to whatever game the Outsider had concocted.

He leaned against the wall, his arms crossed against his chest, “I am afraid it is in both our interests that the Mark remains where it is, your Imperial Majesty,” he said, plainly.

Emily turned to him, fully. She could see the rigidity of his shoulders, clear even under several layers of clothing. The subtle clenching of his jaw. The haughty smirk artificial in it’s creation. In the Imperial court, the nobles learnt to hide physical tells of discomfort, pain, happiness, presenting a single mask of grace. A God had no need for the tricks of nobility - he was above them all. Nonetheless, he was nervous.

“Are you worried?” Emily asked. There was no need to dance around the subject. “That I will fail?”

The smirk disappeared, replaced by a deep frown. “I am not omniscient, Emily. I see flashes of futures which have already passed, pasts which are yet to happen, but I cannot tell the direction the world will take.” He tilted his head towards the ceiling of the cabin, “The only way to know is to experience it. I only wish to maximize your success against Delilah.”

Emily could feel the frigid wind buffering the hull of the Dreadful Wale. Her shoulder ached. Megan will have to start rationing their food supplies soon, if the storm did not pass. 

Emily hoped she would not be too late to save her Empire.

\-------------------------------

Before she had entered the Throne Room, Emily had been certain she would either have to make peace with her death, or come out bloody, bruised and disfigured. Surprisingly, the only memento of her fight against Delilah was a cut on her lip, the result of an unfortunate fall into glass shards.

The hours after the witch had been sealed in her painting had been a blur. Emily remembers her father barking orders to the remaining castle staff, ministers (the ones which were alive, anyway) half-wrought by guilt and relief being brought into the throne room, one by one. Missives and letters written en masse on a dilapidated desk in a room which used to house rows of tomes.

Emily came to when she saw her reflection in the mirror of a guest room - her hair let down, her jacket tattered and ripped, split lip dripping blood on her white undershirt. She had never looked wilder. She had never felt more alive.

“Congratulations are in order, I believe,” she heard a familiar voice remark. The Outsider materialized behind her, an image of perfect poise, in contrast to her disheveled appearance.

“She is no longer bothering you in the Void either, I hope,” Emily responded, staring into The Outsider’s reflection.

“Delilah has been contained, yes,” The Outsider said, moving towards her, “By the time she realizes she has not, in fact, changed the world but rather was confined within the Void, millenia would have passed.” He continued, “She will keep reliving her life as a beloved daughter, sister, aunt and lover. She will never want for nothing.”

“Good,” Emily nodded. The proximity of the Outsider’s ice-cold body had made her aware of the sweat sticking to her back. Has it always been there? Has it just appeared? “For you and Delilah,” she continued, “Both of you deserved better than what you have been dealt.”

The corner of the Outsider’s mouth lifted in myrth, as if he was laughing at a secret joke. “Kindness is a weapon least used,” he said, “but you and your father have certainly mastered it.”

Emily turned to face the Outsider. Conversations with reflections in the vanity mirror seemed all too intimate, all of the sudden. “So, what now?” she asked, too tired to warrant a more complex question.

“You are accepted amongst your people as the rightful ruler to the throne, and lead your empire into a new age of prosperity,” he pauses, as if considering his next words. “Or you don’t, and the empire crumbles into nation-states stuck in a perpetual cycle of war,” he says, plainly. “The choices are all yours, your Majesty.”

“What about you?” Emily probes further. “Do you see your own future?”

“No,” the Outsider answers, “There are many things beyond my reach. The future is certainly one of them.” The earlier myrth disappears entirely. Beyond the window, the last rays of the sun signalling the coming of winter.

“Surely a God would have dominion over most things,” Emily says. “I understand that you may not be able to see how your own future may unfold, but what else is impossible for you to have?”

His black-on-black gaze ( _ green? why was she suddenly thinking about green? _ ) trailed a path across her face, as if studying her. His sight fell upon her lips, cut and bloodied, spilling life carelessly. A calloused hand, cold, but soothing, enveloped her cheek.

His lips tasted exactly like the cold sea water of the Sovereign sea. But they were gentle, soft, so unlike the battering storms Emily endured on her travels back to Dunwall. The Outsider cupped her cheeks, as if he was angling to deepen the kiss…

He broke the kiss. “You,” the Outsider said, gently, stroking her cheek. “I have no dominion over you.”

For a brief second, the blood on his lips made him appear more alive than he has ever been.


End file.
